4 Reasons Your New Year Resolution Is Failing

The ancient Babylonians were the first people to make New Year's resolutions, some 4,000 years ago. They celebrated the New Year during a 12-day festival called Akitu which was the start of the farming season to plant crops, crown their king, and make promises to pay their debts.

The ancient Romans also adopted this resolution culture. However, unlike the Babylonians who celebrated it in March, they shifted with the Julian calendar in 46 B.C., which declared January 1st as the start of the new year.

January was named after the two-faced Roman god, Janus, who looks forward to new beginnings and backward for reflection and resolution. The Romans would offer sacrifices to Janus and make promises to show good behavior the next year.

The customs of the ancient Romans and Babylonians are still practiced worldwide to this day. So much so that Google launched a Resolution Map, allowing users to add resolutions and observe others' in real-time. However, regardless of how many individuals participated in Google's project, the percentage of individuals who keep their resolutions is grim; Only 9.2 percent of people can persevere and somehow all of us have faced this failure of not being able to keep up with the new year resolution. 

Here are some reasons why: 

1. Because we focus on what we want but not on what we need: The pressure to say how you're going to change your life often comes with those activities at the end of the year and New Year's Eve parties. Additionally, a lot of people make resolutions based on what they believe they ought to do rather than what they really want to do. Saying you need to go to the gym all the more frequently when your heart's not in it won't assist you with getting in shape. Attempting something half-heartedly is likely to fail. If you want your new habits to last, you have to be willing to see what you actually want in your life. 
2. See your footsteps: Achievement is estimated as either a total win or a total disappointment. The issue with "all-or-nothing" goals is that they don't take into account even the smallest errors. It's easy to get discouraged and give up when you fall off the bandwagon. Self-sabotage can lead to a mindset of "all or nothing." Many of us may believe that we are not deserving of success without realising it. This indicates that we are constantly at odds with ourselves because we subtly engage in actions that actively make achieving our objectives more challenging. So start journaling or keeping a track of your performance so that you don’t get demotivated so easily. 
3. Try to complete the bigger picture and enjoy the process: Because they encourage a goal-oriented approach rather than a process-oriented one, New Year's resolutions frequently fail. The latter, on the other hand, looks at developing a healthy set of habits to reach the goal—and possibly even surpass it—instead of focusing solely on one objective. Some individuals may find a goal-oriented perspective to be motivating, while others may find it to be too binary. Regardless of whether you gain extraordinary headway towards an objective, you've in fact "fizzled" by not accomplishing 100 percent of it. Habits, on the other hand, place more emphasis on the journey than on the outcome.
4. Overcome planning fallacy: Making good habits last is a lot easier when you plan. The key to long-term success is anticipating challenges and figuring out how to overcome them. When you are working on a resolution, you are bound to make mistakes. You can learn how to recover from those mistakes with advanced planning. And avoiding a mistake from becoming a long-term failure also includes that. Don’t make an un-breathable schedule but rather set small realistic targets to accomplish the main goal. Always remember small steps are also steps and slow and steady wins the race.